Nicolas Roeg tears the lid off that popular can of worms labelled Frustrated Housewife, and out comes a spray of those pretty-colored joke-shop coiled springs. A regulation Mysterious Stranger arrives in town, all the way from England, and thus with tinges of Teddy Boy menace, as well as with the tantalizing promise of fulfilling at once the roles of Mme. Bovary's fantasy lover and Mme. Ovary's fantasy son -- the son she always wanted but never had (or rather momentarily had, but gave up in the Delivery Room in her mid-teens). Is this interloper her real son? Is he real at all? Is he sane? Is she sane? Is the movie any more interesting either way? To be sure, no movie by Nicolas Roeg will be devoid of all interest, visual interest -- as evidence the Godzilla-like destruction of the husband's miniature train set, which calls to mind the apocalyptic finale of Roeg's "Insignificance". But squinty-eyed satire of the Middle American lifestyle -- the all-lavender exercise ensemble, the satellite dish on the front lawn and the television in every room -- does not utilize Roeg's talents at full stretch. It even -- wide as that stretch is -- may be beyond or beneath those talents entirely. The toy-train convention viewed as a sort of political-rally-cum-revival-meeting shows how remote from the subject he (or his scriptwriter and fellow Brit, Dennis Potter) truly is. And in the end he comes nearer here to a state of total noninterest than he had ever come before. Theresa Russell, Gary Oldman, Christopher Lloyd. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd
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